


Not Enough

by Elster



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-16
Updated: 2010-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-11 21:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elster/pseuds/Elster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tagfic for "The End". Those five (hopefully) alternative years from Castiel's point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Enough

_The more that we take  
The paler we get  
I can’t remember what it is  
We try to forget  
The tile on the floor  
So cold it could sting  
In your eyes is a place  
Worth remembering_

(Nine Inch Nails: Love is not enough)

  
In the beginning it’s easy.

Angels don’t make choices. They’re not meant to, not created for it, so they avoid it. Once set in a track they follow it through and try to question it as rarely as possible. One decision is hard enough, why force yourself to make more? It’s about free will, really. That’s a human thing and nothing an angel can ever feel truly comfortable with. It’s not surprising they go crazy in His absence.

The other thing is love. That’s what they were created for, their whole holy purpose:  
To love God.  
No choice there, no wilful spirit to change that. Not even when God grows tired, as is the law of nature or the law of the nature of God. Because that’s how one reacts to unconditional love given a time frame that’s long enough (like… freakin’ _eternity_ ): One tires of it.

And then, when heaven got boring, One goes and creates earth and so forth. And humankind as the cherry on top of that cake. A new kind, like angels, but weak, except for the one marvellous little thing: free will.

That’s what humans aren’t made for: to love unconditionally. They can see His creation and not crave His love. They are free to ignore Him, if He doesn’t give them miracles.

That’s what Cas explains to Dean one night, when the fruitless search for god and the loneliness and Dean’s nagging drive him to finally, for the first time share drinks with him. That’s what’s easy: being with Dean. Because an angel is used to following the few choices he makes.

So, Castiel explains, angels in general hate mankind. Or they would if it was at all possible for an angel to hate. They are after all not human, not like Caine, not free to do anything about unrequited love. Except for one of them, who did and got shit for it. Definitely no forgiveness there. Which is fine by Castiel, but if you really think about it, it kind of stings. And well… that’s where they are, right? Apocalypse and all.

Dean nods in a drunken, incomprehensive kind of way. He snorted, when Cas told him the ‘created to love’-part of his theory, and then pointed out the cute blonde at the bar, because he is Dean and gets those kinds of things, but likes to pretend he didn’t. Cas lets it go, because he made a choice and he has to love and in all this simmering madness he couldn’t find the strength to decide against his token path. That’s why it’s easy.

Castiel is not like the other angels in that last aspect. There are no resentments. He loves God’s creation, humankind included. Despite the heartbreak. He tells Dean that. And everyone else in the bar.  
“I love you, faithless blind sinners that you are!” he shouts.  
Or maybe he said ‘fuckers’. It seems like he doesn’t cope too well with alcohol.

~

It gets harder after a year or two.

There is no sign of god, just demons and mad angels and Dean, who grows colder every day, bit by tiny bit. It’s unhappiness slowly consuming him like cancer. Castiel doesn’t know if he ever saw Dean truly happy. He doesn’t think so, but that’s not the point.

Dean was warm and wilful and always fighting, but somehow, in the last year, the world started wearing him down, making him colder, tired.

“You’re unhappy”, he says one evening, while they are driving to another place infested with demons. There were omens, but really, these days, you could just throw a dart at a map.

Dean doesn’t reply, he just stops singing along with Metallica under his breath. There’s a minute in which Dean tests if Cas would be okay with pretending he never said anything so chick-flick. But he’s not.

“You’re lonely”, he says, before Dean can pick up the lyrics again.

The bastard laughs. “Nah, that’s silly. I have you”, he lies and it’s so fucking awful, that Cas can’t reply right away. He grits his teeth and stares at the oncoming traffic.

Because Castiel is lonely in ways a human can’t fully comprehend. He starts to lose faith that God can be found, maybe even faith in God’s continued existence. It feels to him like being short of breath, but once the doubts are there, he just can’t get over it. He hasn’t spoken to another angel in ages and that’s an ache in its own right. Castiel is not human and Dean is not an angel; he guards his soul like the fragile thing it is and they just can’t seem to connect in a way that makes Castiel feel any less like the last of his kind.

They are both lonely and it doesn’t help that Castiel is occupying space that’s soaked with the aura of Dean’s lost brother. The word ‘rebound’ echoes in his head, a word that never really left him, since he heard it for the first time about eight month ago in a screamed conversation at the other side of a paper-thin motel wall. It’s funny how sometimes, you can get a word and all it’s connotations if you just have the right context to fit it in.

But what he says is “yes” and even if it’s not easy, even if it’s a lie from one perspective, it’s also true.

~

There is a point, when it seems to get better.

It’s proximity, Castiel reasons. They’ve been on the road together for more than two years. Cas has taken to staying with Dean most of the time, because that was where things happened anyway and because somewhere along the line, Dean had started to feel like the only thing in the world that meant anything at all.

It’s when Dean is calling his phone, his voice full of pain and his breath a wheezy hectic thing. He is bleeding out on the floor of a motel room, a red trail marking his way from the parking lot through the door.

Castiel feels something that isn’t new, but he feels it much stronger than ever before. It feels a bit like anger and a bit like grief. He’s not supposed to feel it, an angel shouldn’t love someone so stupid and so weak.

But Dean smiles, when he kneels beside him, a pained twitch of his lips.  
“You should have called earlier”, is all Cas says, in a voice as gentle and steady as his hand on Dean’s chest. He heals Dean’s wounds and then, in a moment of utter madness, not unlike the moment he decided to stand against Uriel, he leans down and kisses Dean.

There is… something. Not the whole soul-touching experience that communication with other angels involves, but some kind of sharing. He is surprised about the physical nature of it. He never really thought about touching people in terms of… well, actually _touching_ them. It’s a strange concept, stranger even than having a physical body in the first place.

It’s confusing and he must have stared at Dean for quite some time.  
Dean stares back just as confused. “Was that… uhm… part of the healing thing?” he asks eventually.  
Cas lifts his hand off Dean’s chest and looks at it, as if maybe, by some kind of crazy reality shift, the rules have changed and it is. Then he looks back at Dean and shakes his head. “There is some kind of connection,” he says, puzzled.  
“You kissed me,” Dean points out.  
“Sorry.”

He stares at Dean, as he sits up, and then, because it’s so fucking strange and makes no sense at all, he leans forward and kisses him again. It’s something.  
“Sorry,” he says again. “It’s really strange.”  
“No shit!” Dean looks at him like he has lost his mind and Castiel thinks that maybe he has a point. “You kissed me! Why? You don’t even _do_ sex!”

Castiel wants to explain to Dean that he never loved something so full of pain and weak and routed in the physical world, that he can’t figure out how to connect to Dean and make him less lonely and cold and despairing. But he just shrugs.

So Dean shrugs, too. They get up and get drunk at the next bar. When they come back to the motel room, Cas tells Dean that he is a faithless fucker and that he thinks Dean has a death wish. Dean laughs, drunken and unhappy, and kisses him, which Castiel hasn’t expected. Then they fuck and it really _is_ some kind of connection and Castiel wishes Dean wouldn’t hurt so much.

~

It’s with the whole thing in Detroit, when everything goes to shit. Bobby tells Dean, that Sam was there the last time he called, and he hasn’t heard anything in a month. So he thought he had to say something.

It’s like every ounce of strength left in Dean is just leaking out. He sits in a dark motel room for two days, then drives the four hundred miles to Detroit and when he gets out of the car he just stands there and doesn’t know what to do.

It’s frightening, because Castiel decided to follow Dean what feels like a long time ago and he doesn’t know if he believes in God anymore and he hasn’t seen any angels around and fears they’re all dead. It’s possible, they were a suicidal bunch, after all, and there are so many demons in the world, maybe they were outnumbered from the start.

When Croatoan hits, it’s almost a relief. It’s some kind of zombie apocalypse. Everybody knows now, that yes, this is the end of the world. Everybody that isn’t infected has to fight, it’s no longer just a few hunters. Castiel leads Dean to other survivors and it gets a bit better, because Dean has to lead those people and he does.

There are other people after three years with basically just Cas and Dean going crazy together. There is a girl, Helen, who raids the pharmacies when they go into a town to stock up on things. Castiel thinks she’s kind of crazy, but he ends up talking to her most of the time, because Dean fucks her and is occupied most of the day, so by some twisted logic, she decides that Cas is her friend. When she dies about half a year later, Cas inherits her house, her drugs and most of her addictions.

It’s really not so bad, all things considered. Dean is a hollow shadow of himself and Castiel has somehow, along the way, lost his powers, so yes, a legacy as drug supplier for a bunch of zombie hunters doesn’t sound too bad. When you’re high.

That’s the thing about angels: they’re not good with choices and love. Castiel has chosen and loved and now he has fallen from grace, or rather the grace has fallen from him, somehow, piece by tiny piece, without him noticing until it was too late. But he will stick to it, stick to Dean till it’s over, because he just can’t be bothered to go through the pain of another pointless decision.

When they find out about Lucifer’s new vessel, it’s not even surprising. Dean tries to summon Zacharias or Michael himself or anyone in a fit of self-loathing, but nothing. God’s dead, zombies everywhere, Castiel gets high and has an orgy, because there’s only so much you can do.

The only thing that kind of hurts is later, when there’s a young strange wrong oh so right Dean, with warmth left and determination and so much shining fucking hurting _soul_. Cas can’t help it, there’s this anger grief feeling, because why must he love someone who can’t save the fucking world?

In the end it’s easy. Castiel, former Angel of the Lord, follows what’s left of Dean and dies in the battle against Lucifer. He hasn’t found God or saved the world or done anything that makes all his sins worth it. But he has hope, because there was another Dean and that means another reality. Hope was something he couldn’t have hoped for, so that’s good.

In the end it’s easy.


End file.
